Dwarf Therapist

Version 20.4 Guide

Resident Mario
December 18, 2013

Table of Contents

Contents
I

Preamble

1 Whats a Dwarf Therapist?

2 Installation

II

Basics

3 Connecting to Dwarf Fortress

4 Main Display
4.1 Labors View . . . . . . . . . . .
4.2 Views . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.3 Group By and Filters . . . . .
4.4 Population indicator and status
4.5 Main Toolbar . . . . . . . . . .
4.6 Docks . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.7 Menu Bar . . . . . . . . . . . .

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6
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5 Managing Your Dwarves

5.1 Making Labor Changes . . . . . . .
5.2 Using Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.3 Using Sorts . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.4 Mass Designations . . . . . . . . . .
5.5 Assigning Nicknames . . . . . . . . .
5.6 Addendum: Managing your Animals

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16
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6 Options
24
6.1 Formatting Your Display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

III

Advanced Features

7 Roles
7.1 Whats in a Role? . . . . . . . .
7.2 Using Roles . . . . . . . . . . . .
7.3 Creating Custom Roles . . . . . .
7.4 Exporting and Importing Custom

28
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Roles

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28
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8 Custom Professions
34
8.1 Creating Custom Professions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
8.2 Exporting and Importing Professions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
9 Custom Grid Views
36
9.1 Creating Your Own Grid Views . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
9.2 Exporting and Importing Grid Views . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

IV

Expert Features

41

10 Filter Scripts
41
10.1 Writing Complex Scripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
11 Optimization Plans
46
11.1 Exporting and Importing Optimization Plans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
12 Addendum: Scanning Memory

51

52

Appendix

13 Hotkeys

52

14 Modifying Game Data

52

Part I

Preamble
1

Whats a Dwarf Therapist?

Dwarf Fortress is not an easy game to play, and many a stoic a gamer has fallen trying to learn how. A
mind-bogglingly complex game wrapped in an extremely simple ASCII1 character-based graphics set, Dwarf
Fortress is renown for being impossible to learn, impossible to play, and impossible to master, and so caters
to a certain, how to say, esoteric crowd. Luckily the kinds of people that play Dwarf Fortress also happen
to be the kinds of people that enjoy laboring over computer programs that, among other things, aim to
make playing the game less of a painful experience (and, luckily for you, the kinds of people that think
laboring over guides for them would make good LATEX practice). Dwarf Fortresss community has lovingly
crafted countless tilesets, character mappings, mods, graphical visualizers, companion programs, launchers,
debuggers, memory access tools, plug-ins, extensions, program packages, so on, so forth, you get the idea,
to extend and empower this (projected) 20 year project of a game.
One such gamer is Trey Stout (or chmod, as hes known on the forums) and one such program is Dwarf
Therapist. Initially released in 2009, the program solves one of the most basic and annoying problems with
the gamethe difficulty involved in setting Dwarven labor preferences. In the vanilla game, the only way
to set dwarven labor preferences (probably the most important setting there is, dwarf- wise) was to get to
the dwarf, get to their labors screen, and then crawl through a tedious menu bumping this labor off or this
one on. A starting group of seven dwarves? Not fun, but in grander context of things, doable. 200 of them
running amok? No way, jose. Dwarf Therapist solved that problem with !!SCIENCE!!, or more specifically,
a program that plugged into the Dwarf Fortress memory and allowed the reading, editing, and committing of
dwarven labor changes, all from a pretty (and functional) graphical user interface (or GUI, in nerd-speak).2
So no, its not designed to console your dwarves psyche, prevent insanity, or relax your brain when you
tie it into a knot trying to figure out why that Legendary Armorer ran into instead of away from that goblin
ambush. Or why that mason just ran off the edge of a waterfall and drowned. Or why that ambusher decided
to take a nap beneath your atom smasher. Or how that Werelizard managed to spawn in the middle of an
ocean. Or why that crossbowdwarf ran off to bash an ogre fifty times his size with a featherwood crossbow
and didnt even stop charging long enough to realize he was also carrying a steel short sword. Or...well,
thats enough dwarven logical fallacies for one day (theres a Dear Urist forum thread for that). But it
will make your life easier in another, more mundane way.
So, if all it does is manage dwarven labors, whats so difficult about it that it necessitates a fifty-plus
page guide? As it so happens, chmod didnt release the basic version of Dwarf Therapist and leave it
there. He continued working on it, polishing off its interface and new features; and then when he retired
from maintaining it in 2010, DwarfEngineer took over its development through 2012, whereupon Splinterz
revealed his code fork of the program in February 2013, which now stands as the primary, maintained
branch of therapy. Years of development have expanded the capacities of the program well past basic labor
management and have turned it into a pretty comprehensive fortress management tool, of which labor
management is only the most obvious and immediately visible application. It has been made into a robust
dwarf management tool, one powerful enough and, yes, complicated enough to sufficiently necessitate an
awesome guide to go with it. Which is what youre reading, by the way. Lets get started, shall we?

1 Technically

Code Page 437, an IBM ASCII expansion sometimes referred to as extended ASCII.
Therapist was not the first such program of its kind; before it most players used a similar utility known as Dwarf
Manager. But the program became outdated and fell out of use, and Dwarf Therapist becameand has remainedthe de
facto standard.
2 Dwarf

Installation

The process for installing Dwarf Therapist on your computer differs a little depending on your system.
Windows: Since Windows is the base version for the utility, installing Dwarf Therapist on Windows is
easy: just download this ZIP file in the Dwarf Fortress File Depot and then extract onto somewhere close
to the game files on your computer. The program will look through your active programs to try and find
the game, so you should generally be safe running it from just about anywhere, even a thumb drive, but its
most logical to stick it in the Dwarf Fortress root directorythe one with the games .exe file. Here is the
link: http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=7184.
OSX: A working version of Dwarf Therapist has been created, and is available here: http://dffd.
wimbli.com/file.php?id=7842.
Linux: A Linux-based version of Dwarf Therapist is available for download from the project page: http:
//code.google.com/r/splintermind-attributes/. Note that it is still considered in alpha, however.
You can also build it from the source with the instructions available here: http://code.google.com/p/
dwarftherapist/wiki/BuildingDwarfTherapist.

Part II

Basics
3

Connecting to Dwarf Fortress

Dwarf Therapist requires Dwarf Fortress to be running and an active fortress to be open within the game
in order to work properly. You can open the utility without the game running or without a fortress loaded,
but it will complain to you:

This is because before Dwarf Therapist can do much of anything useful, it has to connect to a running
instance of the game; the only function that the utility can provide by itself is the ability to write filter
scripts (which obviously cant be applied out-of-game), move the docks around, and change some settings.
Youll get another, similar error message if you load a fortress, connect to the game, and then unload it:3

To avoid such messages you should generally launch Dwarf Therapist

second and close it first, but it doesnt really matter too muchyou can
connect at any time using the Connect to DF button on the main toolbar. To keep its memory usage down, Dwarf Therapist connects to your
game intermittently, loading data into the utility only when a fortress is
first opened or when you request to do so. This is the function of the second button on the main toolbar,
Read Dwarves, which will easily be the most used item on your main toolbar.4 Loading data into the
game only takes a fraction of a second to a few seconds (depending on the size of your fortress) each time,
and it can be done regardless of whether the game is paused or notbut since youre probably going to be
spending some time on the Therapist screen once you switch to it, pausing is probably a good idea.
3 This behavior can be disabled in the general options. However, this is no offline mode: cycling out of a fortress, making
changes, loading it again, and then attempting to commit your offline changes will only cause the utility to crash.
4 Since Dwarf Therapist now lets you view animals, too, the name is a bit of an anachronism. If you mod your game and
change the playable race, the button label will actually change with itone of Dwarf Therapists many mod-friendly features.

Main Display

Once youve connected to and loaded a fresh fortress into Dwarf Therapist, your screen should look something
like this:

4.1

Labors View

Most of the screen space is taken up by the the graphical management user interface (or view ), the main
window visible onscreen. Since weve only just created our fortress it doesnt have many members yet, and
so most of the view is whitespace.
The labors view visible here is the most important and immediately accessible part of the program, and
is the feature around which the rest of Dwarf Therapist is built. Toggling labor preferences has been the
primary purpose of Dwarf Therapist from its very first release, and many users still use it for little else; but
Dwarf Therapist has since become an expansive management utility with an extensive suite of tools and
capacities that this guide will attempt to illuminate in greater depth.
It should be noted that there are more labor preferences available in the game then can be comfortably
and compactly fit into the screen, necessitating that we contend with a scroll bar at the bottom of the screen
6

on all but the widest of monitors; a second one appears on the right once your dwarves get too numerous
(vertically) to fit into the interface.5 The labors themselves are organized into tranches, the same way
they are within Dwarf Fortress, with related labors categorized and sorted under roughly the same color
assignments used by dwarves of those professions in-game:

Most of these labors should be familiar to players of the game, as should be their categorical professions:
miners, woodworkers stoneworkers, rangers, doctors, farmers, fishery workers, metalsmiths, jewelers, craftsdwarves, engineers, and peasants. The only novel labors in the interface are alchemy, which was a game
feature many a version ago that was replaced by soaping (but is expected to return in a future version of
the game), and cleaning, which is novel mostly because dwarves do it so rarely.
To the left of the labor columns are dwarfwise informational columns: a gendered list of your dwarves,
alphabetically ordered, flanked by icons representing their (current) job, a color gradient their happiness
(with or without emoticons, depending on your settings), and another set of icons their profession. Since
we jumped into this view immediately after our fortress disembarked, our dwarves have neither jobs nor
variance in their hapiness just yet, but they do exhibit the different professions Ive selected for my starting
set.
Clicking on a headers at the top of the screen for any of the columns allows us to sort the list by that
column; click on it again to reverse the sort order, or on another column to go to that sort instead. The
name spacer lists your dwarves alphabetically, the job header sorts them by Job ID, happiness by happiness
levelm, and profession by profession ID.6 Hitting the actual labor columns will sort your dwarves in two
tiers, first dwarves with that labor enabled by their experience level, then dwarves without it enabled by the
same metric.7 If none of your dwarves have experience in a task, sorting wont actually do anything.
Within the grid itself the numbers demarkate the skill level of the dwarf at a task while the shading tells
you whether or not they have it enabled. Try clicking on a few of the cells and seeing how the program
respondsgetting labor changes into the game should be entirely intuitive, even if were not going over it in
detail just yet.
One major feature of the grid interace is its tooltips, which pop up
whenever you hover over a space in the grid. Hovering over the labor
column headers will tell you how many dwarves have that labor enabled,
while hovering over individual labor cells will display the descriptive
(Dabbling, Novice, Adequate, Competent, etc.) and raw (0, 1, 2, 3,
etc.) skill that dwarf has in that labor, their cumulative experience and
progress towards the next skill level, whether or not that is their highest
moodable skill, and (if they are legendary from a strange mood) the
name of the artifact they crafted; if the skill has rusted, that information
will appear here as well.8 Hovering over a dwarfs happiness gives you
The labor tooltip.
a dwarfs exact happiness score, over their profession gives you their
in-game job title and profession ID, and over their current job gives
your the numerical ID of that task (see the footnotes below).
5 For

tips on formatting your display for compactness, see the section Formatting Your Display.
Job IDs and Profession IDs are rather abstract lists that numerically organize of their relative items in no particularly
well-sorted order. Applications for and the modification of IDs will be discussed much later in this guide. For further reference,
see Modifying Game Data.
7 Dwarves accumulate experience levels and rank up their skill level every time they pass a certain milestone.
8 Skill rust occurs when a dwarf has not performed the labor associated with a skill for a long time. Dwarves whose skills
are Very Rusty will eventually see their skill in the labor drain away or even vanish completely.
6

By far the most information-dense tooltip on display is that of the dwarves themselves. Hovering over
their names will give you their caste 9 and gender, their profession, their happiness level, their thoughts (color
coded green when good, red when bad), their skills (rust will be highlighted), their traits (and anything they
can or cannot do as a result of them: this dwarf, for instance, cannot gain experience in the Flatterer social
skill), their preferences, and their calculated Top 3 Roles (for a detailed discussion on this aspect of the
program see Roles). The caste description that serves as the dwarven tagline also makes an appearance,
at the end of the tooltip. Notably, the first line in the preferences section tells you how much cave adaptation
the dwarf has experienced: this dwarf is fine with working outside.10

9 Castes (web link) are raw file definitions used to define species or sub-species, and are not very useful in vanilla Dwarf
Fortress: but having a display for them is handy if youre using mods and have fiddled with your playable race.
10 Dwarves that spend a lot of time underground (on Dark tiles) slowly develop cave adaptation, becoming irritated by
the sun or worse, nauseated by the sun. If exposed to direct sunlight (a Light tile) they will have an unhappy thought in
the former and start vomiting too in the latter case.

4.2

Views

Immediately above the labors screen is the screens tab:

Although the Labors view is the core of the interface, and is the tab open by default, theres a number
of other screens built into the utility, all of which are available for your use. The screens tab has several
of these tabs open by default, and more are available under the Add menu in alphabetical order. The
tabs can be moved around, deleted, and re-added as much as you want, and the utility will save their state
between instances, allowing you to keep your favorite tabs around where youd like them. You can also have
multiple instances of a tab openalthough this isnt a particularly useful feature, its there. A list of the
screens and what they do follows:
Animals: Lists domestic, caged, and tame creatures and their attributes. Includes whether or not they are marked for butchering
and whether or not they are caged. Distinguishes between children
and adults, and lists current training levels. This view is unique in
that it is the only one not directed at your dwarves.
Attributes: A basic list of attributes. Tranches are physical, then
mental.
Health: A detailed breakdown of all of your dwarves wounds and
ailments.
Labors: The Labors View is the programs primary view and the
one it opens up to by default; for a detailed description see Labors
View.
Labors Alt: An colorful, compressed, and altogether more professional alternative to the Labors view that was originally created as
part of this guide, and has since been packaged into the utility: see
the section Creating Your Own Grid Views.
Labors NO SPACERS: Same as the Labors view, but without
any spacers between the categorial professions, winning back some
screen space.
Military: Allows you to view your dwarves combat ability. It lists
the relevant combat skills in melee, fighter, equipment, miscellaneous, and marksdwarf tranches, then gives
you a view of their combat-related attributes, then their compatibility scores for various combat roles, then
which weapons they are or are not able to equip based on their relative size.11
Military-Alt: Expands on the regular Military view by including role ratings.
Roles: Lists the role ratings of your dwarves, a score out of 100 that tells you how adapted they are to that
profession. This is a fairly advanced topic covered in detail in the section Roles.
Social: Catalogues your dwarves social skills. The tooltip lists related roles, which are only present for
some of the social skills.
Social-Alt: Expands on the regular Social view by including role ratings, as well as a non-social trait
columns for traits are affected by social traits. For example, Assertiveness is added and grouped with
Persuader, because having low assertiveness means its impossible to increase the persuader trait.
Traits: This is a special view that lists raw role ratings; see above.
Weapons: Lists dwarves by which weapons they can wield. This view is dynamically generated: in vanilla
it acts as a subview of the military view, but mods with large amounts of weapons will look significantly
more exansive. Additonally, the weapons view will be tacked on to the military view as well if there are ten
or fewer weapon groups.
11 Theoretically all the but the runtiest of dwarves are able to wield all but a few especially large non-native weapons onehanded; however, because of a bug, in Fortress Mode no dwarves can wield two-handed weapons, ever.

4.3

Group By and Filters

Filter scripts are an advanced topic covered in Filter Scripts, and will not be covered here, but the
Filter Dwarves input field is quite simple: it just lets you filter your dwarves by name, making it easier to
find any specific dwarf youre looking for. Click on the red X to quickly remove the filter.
The Group By menu, meanwhile, changes what your dwarves are sorted by in the views, and is fairly
intuitive, mostly useful for examining various demographic breakdowns of your fortress. Options are:
Nothing, the default.
Age, in tiers of ten.
Caste, all dwarves in vanilla outside of the Animals view.12
Current Job, a breakdown of the stuff your dwarves are doing.
Happiness, the sort does a better job.
Has Nickname, yes or no, useful when youre naming dwarves.
Highest Moodable Skill, useful when grinding for a legendary armorsmith.
Legendary Status, yes or no.
Migration Wave, the utilitys best historical sort, and therefore a go-to grouping.
Military Status, active, off duty, can activate, or noble.
Profession, perhaps less useful than the equivalent sort.
Race.13
Sex.
Squad, No Squad or *Squad Name*.
Total Assigned Labors, a numerical statistic.
Total Skill Level, another numerical statistic.
When a group is active it will be expandable and collapsable, and in the collapsed
labors view will display the lowest happiness of the group as well as (for each skill) if
anyone in the group has the skill enabled, resulting in a darkened box, or if they all have it enabled, resulting
in a bright green one. This feature can be toggled on or off in the options. Groups consisting entirely of
children will appear bright green. For more on using groups, see Using Groups.

4.4

Population indicator and status bar

The population indicator in the top-right corner of the window

gives an at-a-glance view of how many dwarves there are in your
fortress, distributed adults/children/babies, and the number of
currently active pending changes (refer to Managing Your Dwarves).
The basic status bar at the bottom of the window provides row and column information on the left, and
a dwarf selection count and Dwarf Fortress version type information on the right.

12 When mods are active an additional Caste Tag option becomes available, useful for finding hidden or secret castes that
may exist.
13 A creatures race is defined off of its raw file, and will be the same as its caste in most cases. The exception is when a
sub-special caste existsin which case, race and caste does in fact diverge.

10

4.5

Main Toolbar

The main toolbar presents the most important shortcuts the program has to offer. Except for the
Optimizer, all of the toolbar items have an associated hotkey. Right clicking on the main toolbar allows
you to toggle it (and docks, covered in the next section) on and off, and it can also be accessed under the
Window menu in the main menu.
Connect to DF: If Dwarf Therapist is not already connected to Dwarf Fortress, this will attempt to
connect the program. If it is, this will be grayed out. Shortcut Ctrl + C.
Read Dwarves: Reads the current state of the dwarves in your fort into the Therapist. Shortcut
Ctrl + R.
Expand All: Expands all group views; if Group By is set to Nothing this will have no effect.
Shortcut CTRL + >.
Collapse All: Collapses all group views, doing the opposite of the above command. Shortcut CTRL +
<.
Clear: Clears all labor preference changes (see Managing Your Dwarves). Shortcut Ctrl + E.
Commit: Commits labor preference changes (see above). Shortcut Ctrl + T.
Optimize: Runs an optimization planthe test plan if none is defined. Optimization is an advanced
topic covered in Optimization Plans.
Options: Allows you to adjust settings. Will be covered in the section Options.
Exit: Exits the application.

11

4.6

Docks

When you first open Dwarf Therapist, the right side of the screen will host a couple of docks. These two
marvelous boxes are used to keep pace with what youre doing and modify how Dwarf Therapist works in
various ways. Up to a trio of docks can be attached to the right side of the screen, and others can be pinned
against other cardinal directions (or simply left floating around). Clicking the window button detaches the
dock and leaves it to float, while clicking on the X button closes them, giving the others more room. If you
dont have any docks at all pinned to a the right side, the main view will expand to make use of the new
screen space.
By grabbing and dragging a dock you can actually attach anywhere on the screento the left, above,
below, or to the right of the main view. By grabbing and dragging it into another dock, you can tab them, so
that the dock that is currently open gets to monopolize the screen space. And the current dock configuration
is saved between instances of the program, of course. Note that the main menu is actually also a dock, albeit
one that must stay independent when docked, and so can be moved anywhere or even gotten rid of entirely.
A list of docks follows:
Dwarf Details: This one lists a lot of stuff, so if you use it you should tab-dock it. Dwarf Details
provides an expanded view of a dwarfs abilities, providing pretty much all of the information on their
capacities in the various views (and then some) in one comprehensive tabular form. Youve got name,
translated name, age, profession, current job, happiness level, skills table with progress bars, attribute
table with maximum trainable value and message text, raw trait value with message text, top ten role
ratings, and a table of the dwarfs preferences.

Pending Labor Changes: This dock displays which labors you are turning on or off in a tabular
form (it also records the addition and removal of personal nicknames), and allows you to commit
or clear your changes independent of the main toolbar. There are also buttons for expanding and
collapsing labor changes displayed in the dock, useful when making mass labor swaps. For a discussion
on Managing Your Dwarves (Im getting there, I promise!) see Managing Your Dwarves.
12

 Custom Professions Icons: This dock allows you to create custom professions and custom icons.
For a discussion on creating custom professions see Creating Custom Professions.
Grid Views: Allows you to open grids from a menu, or create entirely new ones of your own design.
See section Creating Your Own Grid Views.
Skill Legend: Provides a legend for skills display onscreen, and allows you to quickly change it with
a drop-down menu. Not really very useful.
Preferences: Lists your dwarves by preferences, and allows you to search through them by object of
preference. Clicking on one or more of the preferences allows you to filter dwarves so that only those
with that preference are displayed on-screen (and Clear Filter obviously clear the filter).
Thoughts: Similar to the Preferences dock, this brings up popular thoughts by count, allows you to
search through them, and allows you to filter your dwarves by them.

Health Legend: The health legend allows you to filter your dwarves by health status, using the
information provided in-game by the health screen. The dock includes mundane irregularities such as
hunger and thirst as well as rather severe conditions like missing limbs and paralysis. This information
is summarized by the Health view.

13

4.7

Menu Bar

The last piece of Dwarf Therapist were going to analyze is the iconic menu bar (or taskbar), present on
almost every real application ever written. Im going to give a brief list of whats in it here, and direct you
to the sections for specific functions when appropriate.
File provides a smorgasbord of options:
Connect to DF (CTRL + C). See Connecting to Dwarf Fortress.
Read Dwarves (CTRL + R). See Connecting to Dwarf Fortress.
Commit (CTRL + T). See Managing Your
Dwarves.
Clear (CTRL + E). See Managing Your
Dwarves.
Import Professions from DF. See Exporting
and Importing Professions.
Export Custom Professions. See Exporting
and Importing Professions.
Import Saved Custom Professions. See Exporting and Importing Professions.
Export Current Grid View as CSV. Exports
the current view as a comma exported value
spreadsheet, which is a basic TXT that can be
read by almost any spreadsheet software.
Export Grid Views. Exports, in Dwarf Therapists DTG export format, a chosen selection of
grid views to a chosen file location. See Exporting and Importing Grid Views.
Import Grid Views. Imports DTG grid views
from the disk. Exporting and Importing
Grid Views.
Snapshot (CTRL + S). Takes a snapshot of the
currently active Dwarf Therapist window, and
stows it away where you tell it. Baically an
extended version of the PRNT SCR key.14
14 This option is functionally limited to full-window shots, and so should not be used too extensivelythe screenshots for
this guide, for instance, were done with Greenshot.

14

 Clear User Settings. Deletes all user settings

and then exits Dwarf Therapist. This restores
all settings in the program back to default and
erases all data, which is why it has a warning screenit can be very damaging if you
have complex scripts and other goodies programmed into the utility.
Options (CTRL + P). Also provided on the Main
Toolbar; see Options.
Scan Memory. See Addendum: Scanning
Memory.
Exit. Immediately exits the program.
Scripting provides facilities for generating Filter Scripts to apply to your dwarves. For a detailed discussion
on Filter Scripts, see Filter Scripts.
Roles provides facilities for creating, modifying, removing, importing, and exporting custom roles. For a
detailed discussion on Roles, see Roles.
Optimizer allows the creation, modification, deletion, importation, and exportation of Optimization Plans.
For details, see Optimization Plans.
Windows allows you to modify the docks and main toolbar displays in a manner similar to right clicking on
the main toolbar. For more information on Docks, see Docks; for more information on the main toolbar,
see Main Toolbar.
Help links you to a few different webpages and such:
Project Homepage. Provides a link to the project homepage:
http://www.code.google.com/r/splintermind-attributes/.
Discussion Forums. Provides a link to the main Dwarf Therapist forum thread:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=122968.0.
Request Feature / Report Bug. Provides a link to the Dwarf Therapist issue tracker: http://www.
code.google.com/p/dwarftherapist/issues/entry/.
Donate. For buying the poor developer a beer through PayPal.
About. Brings up a small splash screen giving you the Dwarf Therapist version number, some accreditation links, and a link to check for updates.

15

Managing Your Dwarves

Now that weve finally pinned down all the wayward bits of Dwarf Therapist and
explained, though in some advanced cases quite briefly, what each of them does, we
are in a position to discuss the games primary source of utility: its ability to change
the games dwarven labor preferences, without having to deal with the games clunky
dwarfwise interface. This section will cover the basic tenets of dwarven management
and demonstrate why even when Dwarf Fortress updates that have been in the works
for a year or more are released, many people still refuse to play until Dwarf Therapist
is updated to match. If youve already gotten dwarven labor management down pat,
you can skip ahead to Options, or to Advanced Features if youre itching
Dwarves frolic by the
to try out the programs more advanced features.
caravan.

5.1

Making Labor Changes

Now lets return to the seven humble dwarves we touched upon at the beginning of this guide, illustrated
above. Weve got two miners, a carpenter/woodcutter, a mason, a stonecrafter/broker, and two farmers.
The woodworker is soon to be off cutting wood, and the two miners are soon to be off diggingbut what
should the other four dwarves do? The facilities for their professions havent been built, and theres nothing
to haul around yet. This is a recurring problem, but I look around and see that there are plenty of bushes
lying around that can be stripped for some free early food (and seeds for an above-ground farm, later on).
So I designate some plants for gathering, and then change the labors to get my dwarves to do some work for
me.
Individually designating dwarven labors for changes is as simple as clicking on the boxes that correspond with that dwarf and that task in the labor view. The box with either fill or unfill and will be
surrounded by a bright red border, and the exact nature of the labor changes will be added to the pending labor changes dock if one is present on your screen and notched onto the Pending Changes counter
near the top right of your screen; the Clear and Commit buttons on the main toolbar will greenlight as
well. The changes that we would like to make and how they appear on-screen are highlighted on the
left. To revert a change youre makingif, for instance, you accidentally toggle Plant Gathering on for
your Carpenter, when what you really want him to be doing is chopping treesjust click on it again
to revert it to the previous state.
Weve made some labor preference changes, but right now theyre only hanging around in the
Pending Labors queue in Dwarf Therapist. To make them actually appear in the game, we have
to commit these changes. Heres what the changes we want to make look like in the Pending Labor
Changes dock, expanded for clarity and collapsed for compactness (which is what the buttons do, if
you didnt know already):

You can remove the need for collapsing changes by giving the dock a bit more breathing room.

16

Hitting Clear Changes will clear all of these changes and wipe Dwarf Therapist to its previous state, while
hitting Commit Changes will send the new labor orders through to the game, updating Dwarf Therapist
to reflect the changes and producing immediate results. These buttons are available on both the Pending
Labor Changes dock and on the Main Toolbar, however they also have hotkeys: Ctrl + E and Ctrl + T,
respectively. Since these are two of the most common operations youll be conducting with the program, its
probably a good idea to remember these hotkeysit will save you a lot of time (refer to Hotkeys for the
list of available hotkeys).
Dwarves start off with certain labors enabled: labors they have above-dabbling level skill in, hauling
labors (including the two medical ones), and cleaning are always going to be set to on. The presence or lack
of hauling labors especially is a concern: if we want the dwarf to be entirely focused on their primary tasks,
these should be turned off, but if you want them to help with hauling away loose stone, feeding the wood
stockpiles, and so on, then these should be turned on. For instance, I always dedicate my miners 100 percent
to their task, and turn off all of their other (non-cleaning) labors. But theres a lot of small hauling labors,
and turning them on or off individually is a pain. One solution is to hold down the mouse button and drag
your cursor across the labors: this will toggle every labor you pass through on or off. But its still not that
fast, and its pretty easy to mess up and accidentally toggle a nearby dwarfs labors on or off with it, which
requires backtracking, which is a waste of time.
Thankfully, theres a better way! Go to any one of
the labors in the tranche and right-click on it. Lo and
behold, an option to toggle all jobs in that grouping on
or off appears! Im going to use this now to quickly and
seamlessly turn off hauling for my miners, and dedicate them to their labors. This toggle feature is mostly
useless for professions labors, but devilishly handy for designating hauling on or off when and where you
need it.

Mischief, managed.

17

5.2

Using Groups

Now, picking out whos who on the labors view is easy enough when theres just seven dwarves to deal with.
But it becomes quite a bit more problematic when theres say, seventy of them running amok:

Whos who? Beats me.

This is when two of the built-in sorting features of Dwarf Therapist, Groups and Sorts, become useful
(you can also use filters, but thats a more difficult topic for later: see Filter Scripts if youre impatient).
First, lets talk in terms of Groups. Groups are described in brief in the Group By and Filters
section of this guide, somewhere way above here: refer to it again if you need a refresher. Right now I return
to the game screen and discover that six of my dwarves are idlingnot bad in fortress of this size, but Ive
always been one to keep my dwarves hands as busy as possible; dont want them making friends in my
dining room and then tantruming about it later. Maybe its a lost cause - it appears all the useful ones are
out partyingbut well try anyway.15
In a large enough fortress, trying to find out which dwarves are
twiddling their thumbs is a fantastically annoying chore. Luckily, we
can simplify the task for ourselves by grouping our dwarves by their
current job. Going to the Group By drop-down menu and selecting
Current Job will nicely clump our dwarves bywhat elsetheir
current jobs. After a little bit of snooping, Im able to figure out what
the problems are. Weve got three jobless Miners with nothing to
mine, a Woodcrafter (but really Thresher) with nothing to process,
a Metalcrafter with nothing to craft, and a Ranger with nothing to
haul. The Ranger will very soon find himself work, a spot of designation gets the Miners up and at it
15 Actually you can stop a party dead in its tracks and return the partying dwarves to their labors by freeing the room in
which the party is taking place, and then redesignating it. The more you know...

18

again,16 and I add some processing jobs to an idle Farmers Workshop. Bam; idle hands, managed! Ah, but
whats this:

Migrants! What are we going to do with them? After letting them get used to my fortress surroundings, I
open up the Dwarf Therapist, group by Migrant Wave, open up the new guys, and am now ready to do some
easy-to-make-out management; as an added bonus itll tell you exactly how many dwarves youre getting
this season. Dwarves are loaded into the memory the instant the message appears, so they dont actually
have to be on your map yet for you to start working with their labor designationsa neat feature.17
Now, whenever you group your dwarves the top row will consist of a collapsible group name and header,
and a series of labor boxes that, based on whether theyll filled out or not, tells you which labors have been
enabled within the group. Since these are new migrants and I havent make adjustments yet, it basically
tells me what skills the random number god has gifted me with this immigratory wave:

Unfortunately Armok has not graced me with an armorer this season.

By clicking on these headers you can enable or disable a labor for an entire grouping. Since we dont
want the new migrants idling, but havent yet made facilities for most of them to use, lets do what we
always do when a new migrant wave arrives: mass designate stuff for them to do, in bulk. Well, it just so
happens that Ive got a wall that Ive been meaning to build, and theres quite a lot of fortress surface that
needs to be smoothed out (and dont even get me started on the many pictures of cheese that we need, but
lack!). So I click on the Masonry and Stone Detailing headers, toggle them on for the entire wave (you can
also right-click on the headers), commit, and voilastuff for them to do!
Now, these are just two of the most immediately useful scenarios for which grouping comes in handy, and
there are quite a few more groupings that you can make and display. Additionally, if the correct option is
enabled, these groups carry across all of the views, not just the current one. To see a demographic breakdown
of your dwarves, group them by Age or Sex. To see which of your dwarves are Legendary, group them by
Legendary Status (or hit Highest Skill for a more inclusive view). To check up on happiness, hit Happiness.
To start working with Nicknames, hit Nicknames (this will prove useful in Assigning Nicknames, still
ahead of us). To see what the chances of you getting a Legendary Armorsmith are, hit Highest Moodable
Skill. To sort them by Military Status, click that, or Squad to check up on individual squads. To sort by
Profession, hit profession. Use Collapse All and Expand All to switch between detail levels without having
to manually toggle groups; for expedience youll probably want to remember the associated CTRL + < and
CTRL + > shortcuts.
Groups are a great tool for discerning demographic information about your fortress, which is why they
work so well for spotting migrantsbut as a sorting mechanism theyre far from perfect. Dwarf Therapist
therefore supplements grouping with another organization scheme, sortingthe topic of the very next section.

16 I cannot recommend the utility DFHack, and specifically its digv command, enough. It makes digging designations so much
easier!
17 Though its generally reliable, when loading in dwarves from an auto-pause, the program may occassionally miss a couple.
If you want to play it safe, wait until the first few dwarves have made it onto your map.

19

5.3

Using Sorts

Lets now return to the problem of the six idling dwarves, and approach it with sorting in mind. When you click on one of the column
headers at the top of a view, it will sort the content in ascending order against that column. The Current Job column is numerically
sorted by the Job ID, an internal list number assigned to that job.
Theres no particular order to how Job IDs are assigned because
theres not truly superior logical way to organize them, but whats
important to know is that idling is assigned a value of -1. Sorting
the column once will put idlers at the bottom, then sorting again
will flip it around and bring them to the topperfectly positioned
for labor manipulation. Dwarves on break are given a value -2 and,
conveniently enough, are also displayedon top of idle ones.
Sorting by happiness will list your dwarves by their numerical happiness level, grading your dwarves down
from estatic green to suicidal reda far superior solution to the blunt and categorical Group equivalent.
The Profession column works in a similar manner to the Current Job column, sorting by another abstract
numerical system, this one known as the Profession ID list. This (and the many variety of professional
icons) makes it much harder to recognize sorted professions from one another than grouped ones, so grouping
is the clear winner when it comes to this particular task. The professional listing does have one useful function,
though, in that it more immediately lists peasants at the top (or bottom) of the list. These ID lists are not
immutable entities, and can in fact be edited: for information on how, see the section Modifying Game
Data, in the appendix.
Hovering over individual professions tells you how many dwarves have that labor enabled, and then
clicking on it will sort your dwarves by their experience and skill in that category. This is much quicker and
cleaner than performing the same operation with groups:

Anyone can pick plants, but only true farmers can plant seeds.
The ability to seamlessly list your dwarves by their competence at a task is one Dwarf Therapists key
sources of utility, and has many obvious applications when you need to find dwarves for a task you have in
mindlike, say when building a marksdwarf squadron:

You can go even further with Filter Scripts and Roles, but those are advanced topics that well
leave for later. If you right click on a column you can change the sort methodthis is a more advanced
role-based capacity, and will be discussed at length in the section Using Roles.

20

5.4

Mass Designations

In demonstrating the utility of grouping our use case was migrant wave designation, and in assigning our
new dwarves things to do we made use of Dwarf Therapists groupwise designation tool. By clicking on a
group header you toggle a labor on for all legal dwarves in the contingent group; click on it again and you
will toggle it off. This is one of Dwarf Therapists most apparent mass designation toolswe will discuss
these in detail in this section.
Groupwise designation is actually a subset of fortress-wide
designation, which can be achieved with the labor headers
right click menu, shown at right (the other options have to
do with columnar sorting and are covered in Using Roles).
Options one and three respectively toggle the labor on or off for
every eligible dwarf in the fortress. The second option, meanwhile, is a smart sort: it allows you to assign the labor only to those dwarves skilled in it (skill level Novice
or above), and it will disable it on dabblers.
The ability to designate bulk jobs thusly comes in handy in a number of different scenarios. In times
of war you can quickly toggle off dangerous jobs like Hunting and Plant Gathering, for instance, and when
youre finally getting around to dedicating a dwarf or a number of dwarves to a specific job you can quickly
eliminate that labor from all other stragglers. Assigning every instance of a labor is not so immediately
apparently useful but works well when combined with filter scripts, an advanced sort tool described in detail
in Filter Scripts. Skilled labor assignment, meanwhile, can be used to put those hunters and gatherers
back to work after the danger has passed, or for reinstating jobs accidentally deleted by careless labor editing.
These three toggles comprise the laborwise mass designation tools and
are complemented by similar dwarfwise ones shown at right, also accessible
with a right click (the other options on the menu are covered at various
other points in this guide). An option for assigning every labor is provided
more for the sake of paralleism than anything elsethere are hardly any
situations where you want a dwarf working every job, and in specialized
labor subset views labor group designation is handled in a more intuitive
way by something else were going to discuss shortly. Clearing all labors has the obvious utility of allowing
you to clean a dwarfs slate, saving you a number of clicks when youre dedicating them to a labor. Finally,
assigning all skilled labors does what it did in the laborwise menu but in reverse, and can be used to
de-dabble or otherwise reset a worker.
Finally, by right-clicking on any labor box in the view you
can toggle on or off that entire labor tranche for the associated
dwarf. This is an immense time-saver for those occassions when
you have a dwarf running a gamut of jobsdisabling or enabling the different hauling subtasks, for instance,
or enabling a gamut of tasks in a specialized labor subview (more intuitively suited for this tasks than the
full all labors trigger).
It should be noted that all of these designation tools respect the bounds of the view: that is to say, they
will not affect labors or workers that are not visible in the view. This behavior is useful if you are filtering
your dwarves, if you have removed certain benign labors (like Cleaning) from the view, or if you are using
a specialized custom labor subview. The triggers would better be named Assign All Visible Labors and
Assign Labor to all listed dwarves.

21

5.5

Assigning Nicknames

So youve spent a good ten minutes shifting around labors, building facilities, and generally getting your
latest migratory wave to work at the various things that need work in your fortress. Youve bootstrapped
a metalworking industry, started making some potash, and are now weaving clothes. Feeling content with
yourself, and maybe just a little tired because its somehow two in the morning and youve been sitting
here for five hours now, you save and log off so you can go get some sleep. In the morning you wake up,
pour yourself some cereal, check the time (still Sunday, thank god), stretch your arms, and go right back
to playing Dwarf Fortress. You open up Dwarf Fortress and...argh! Whats this! Why are all these silly
peasants making crappy armor while your legendary armorsmith is idling! Who told that farmer he could
take over the cooks job! And most importantly, why is there still stone lying around everywhere!!!
So perhaps playing Dwarf Fortress until two in the morning isnt good for your fortress (never mind your
sleep cycle). But theres another way to stay on top of the roles your dwarves are supposed to be playing,
one with which you can be relatively sure that, if you come back in a weeks time instead of a days and
have forgotten all of the various itty-bitty configuration details that the fortress survives on, youll be able
to (more) easily pick them up again and keep right on playing. The solution is to name your dwarves.
Dwarven nicknames are often used rather jestingly by players, since you can name any dwarf pretty
much anything, even calling your King Giant Poo Poo Head and your Great Potash Maker Unfortunate
Accident. Dwarves dont know the difference and thus dont mind, but its worth a cheap laugh from
the player if Giant Poo Poo Head goes to clean up the blood stain left by the demise of Unfortunate
Accident. However, they can actually be a pretty powerful tool if used right. By nicknaming your dwarves
by what their profession within your fortress is or will be, youll be able to more easily keep track of who
they are when you bump into them in the labor manager or on-screen. Their professional name might be
Woodworker, but to you theyre Furnace Operator, and using nicknames allows you to keep track of
that while their professional name catches up to their new role.
Lets look at one such fella for which a naming would be useful, a certain Medtob Swinwind.

Mebtob has a few assorted skillshes an adequate Tanner and

Fish Cleaner, and a Novice Fisherdwarf and Fish Dissector. However, none of these skills are really useful to me: Ive got enough
fisherdwarves and fish cleaners already,18 tanning is only useful every once in a while, and fish dissection is a near completely worthless skill. What I do need, however, are some leatherworkersI just
bought a shipment from a caravan, and want to turn it into a complete set of backpacks, waterskins, and quivers for my military to peruse. Unfortunately the random number god has not blessed me with
any professional leatherworkswhich is fortunate for Mebtob, since
hes now going to move past peasanthood to become the fortress
leatherworker.
For now, though, hes still a regular old fish cleaner, and if you
bump into him in the hallway or look at him in Dwarf Therapist
after a week away or a really long night, you wont have a clue what
hes there for. So to make that job easier, lets give him a nickname.
Right click on Mebtob to bring up the same personalization menu
we discussed a section earlier. For now we want Set Nickname:

18 Because of a bug, fish stocks do not replenish, which means that they will inevitably go bust, leaving your fishery workers
with nothing to do.

22

New nicks are actually treated the same way as labor changes: once youve chosen a new nametag for
your dwarf to go by and clicked on OK, the name change will be added to the Pending Labor Changes
dock, awaiting committal:

Ah yes, compatriot Leatherworker Skinwind.

Commit the change, and you shall confuse the role this dwarf plays no longer.

5.6

Addendum: Managing your Animals

While most of the views in Dwarf Therapist besides the labors view are non-interactive, one isthe Animals
viewand so its worth mentioning here. The Animals view provides information on the name (duh) and
owner of the creature, their profession (really whether they are children or adults), their training level
(nothing is displayed if they are tame), whether or not they are designated for or can be butchered, whether
or not they are in a cage, and their physical attributes. I say that this menu is interactive, and it is: non-wild,
non-pet creatures can be designated for butchering here. This makes a partial replacement for the Animal
Status screen in-game - although you cannot (yet) designate creatures for taming through it.
That concludes our discussion of Dwarf Therapists basic labor management tools. We will cover many
more advanced features in the Advanced Features section of this guide, but for now lets examine
another aspect of the program: the options menu.

23

Options

The Options menu is available from a few different places: either a button on the main taskbar, through the
File menu in the main menu, or with the Ctrl + P hotkey. This brings up a menu:

The options menu is extremely well-documented: if youre ever at a loss for what a particular checkbox
or radio button does, hover over it and look for its description in the text box at the bottom of the dialogue.
Its all quite intuitive and well-explained, so instead of wasting a ton of time and space describing it, I invite
you to explore the menu, and then come back to here.
Good? Ok, lets leverage our options to improve how Dwarf Therapist looks and runs a bit.

24

6.1

Formatting Your Display

A big problem I have with the default configuration of the current version of Dwarf Therapist is how
unnecessarily complicated and bulky it is. Dwarf Therapist is a utility, and thus its beauty is in its usability
not the fancy and non-functional faded-out boxes and headers and dividers that eat up tons of screen
space. So in this section were going to leverage the programs high degree of customizability to simplify its
appearance and increase its information density; if you like how it looks as it is, skip ahead to the next part
of this guide, Advanced Features.

My horizontal scroll bar at the beginning of this exercise.

Remove Spacers
To remove the spacers from the long-form Labor view, peruse the Views. Drop in the Labor NO
SPACERS view from the menu and then delete the old one. Of course having NO SPACERS stare at us
is quite annoying; well look at ways to fix this later in this guide.19

Getting better...
Turn off Gradient Shading on Headers
To remove the gradient shading in the column headers and return them to plain coloration, uncheck
Gradient Shade Column Headers in Options > Grid Options.

Much more readable.

Turn off Gradient Shading on Cells
To remove the gradient shading present on table cells that are toggled on, uncheck Gradient Shade
Cells in Options > Grid Options.

Easier on the eyes.

Synchronize Scrolling between Views
To enable this feature, check Synchronize View Scroll Positions in Options > Grid Options. This
adds some functionality to your views, preserving the current scroll position between them and letting you
examine a single dwarf (or if theyre sorted the same way, a group of dwarves) through the lens of multiple
19 Note that as of version 20.6 Dwarf Therapist now ships with the very view solution first presented in this guide as an
alternative option to the default: check the Labors Alt option.

25

different views. They dont have to be sorted the same way for this to work, though occasionally it near-misses
(bringing you to the dwarf just above the one you care about in the view).
Highlight Highest Moodable Skill
To enable this feature, check Highlight moodable cells in labor/skill columns. in Options > Grid
Options. This ones optional: it gives you extra information, but knowing what moods your dwarves are
likely to have isnt terribly useful since the selection is random, and you can get the information at a glance
through a Group. Though it doesnt say it, this option also highlights dwarves that are legendary because
of a mood with a different colored box. You can change the colors in Options > Grid Colors.

Moodable in green, already mooded in brown.

Show Highest Moodable Skill in Tooltip
To enable this feature, check Show Highest Moodable Skill in Tooltip in Options > Tooltip. This
will add a Highest Moodable Skill entry to the dwarf tooltipno real reason not to have it.
Make the Main Toolbar More Compact
To shrink the main toolbar a bit so that it doesnt take up so much
vertical room (and thus give your view and your docks more of it), uncheck
the Show Toolbar Text option in Options > General.
Highlight Nobles
To turn this feature on, hit Highlight Nobles in Options > Nobles. The
default color is orange, and you can further pick specific colors for specific
roles. Personally I set chief medical dwarves to dark red, bookeepers, managers,
mayors, and brokers to magenta, royals to dark magenta, and military types
(militia leaders, champions) to dark green.
Role Information in Labor Columns
To turn this feature on, hit Role Information in Labor Columns in Options >Roles. Weve barely
talked about roles so far, and theyre covered in-depth in the section on them, thoughtfully titled Roles.
For now its just more information for you to peruse.
Move, or Remove, your Docks
Docks are a very useful thing, displaying useful information in a compact form. However, if you want to
make the most use of your space: go without. Removing all docks from the right side of the screen so that
the edge of the view window is now plum against the right edge should be enough to let you see the entirety
of the grid on a moderately large screen.

On my (21-inch) monitor, it was enough to get rid of the scroll bar completely.
If you want to get rid of the scroll bar but want to keep your docks, too, another option is to place them
at the bottom. This is a dock-heavy option, however, because the docks are not optimized to use horizontal
space wellso giving the Pending Labor Changes the entire lower fourth of the screen is no better than
giving it the same amount of space, vertically, on the sidebar.

26

Remove the Main Toolbar

The main toolbar is very skinny: if, like me, you have space on the right edge (or can spare a sliver off
the top), you can simply and safely stick it there. But if you want to reclaim that last ounce of screen space,
by all means, remove it: all of its commands are hotkeyed anyway.
Play with Fonts, Spaces, and Font Sizes
If this still isnt enough to get rid of the horizontal scroll bar, and you really, really want to get rid of it,
you can play around with the fonts, font sizes, spacer options, and grid sizes in Options > Grid Options,
and lower the sizes of things until the bar is no more. Obviously, the smaller the font and grid size, the
harder it is to read information of the utilityeven reducing it from 16px to 15px has a noticeable effect.
Here is what my display looked like at the end of this exercise:

Cleaner, more informative, and most importantly: no horizontal scroll bar!

27

Part III

Advanced Features
In this section of the guide were going to really dig into Dwarf Therapist, working with powerful elements
of the program that arent as immediately apparent as toggling labors on and off, giving stuff nicknames,
and other such simple and obvious applications.

Roles

7.1

Whats in a Role?

So far weve mentioned roles and the role they play in Dwarf Therapist only in passing. Since were now
going to discuss them in more detail, the first question we have to ask is, whats in a role? Have you ever had
two miners work side-by-side from the very beginning of the game, but discovered that one reaches legendary
status before the other? This happens when one dwarf is better adapted to that role than his fellow, and
the differences between them become increasingly obvious over time. Roles is Dwarf Therapist-speak for
the holistic weighing of the various elements of job performance, of which skill is only the most immediately
visible and obvious element. Thus in order to understand what roles are, we must first get comfortable with
what these elements are, and where they come from.
Attributes are, subjectively speaking, the most important hidden role modifier. No two dwarves are
alike, and all dwarves have certain attributes that are attached to them from birth.20 Where one dwarf
might be naturally weak have superb spatial sense, another might lack analytical ability and be susceptible
to disease, but be unnaturally strong. These attributes themselves fall into two categories, physical and
mental; they can be assesed under the Attributes view, and theyre described in detail on the DFWiki:
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Attributes. Since theyre pretty important for understanding roles, heres a quick list of the ones that affect job performance:21
Physical Attributes
Strength: Alters the damage done in melee (increases velocity of weapon swings), increases muscle
mass (thicker muscle layer also resists damage more), and increases how much a creature can carry.
Higher strength also increases the speed with which a creature, even a naked creature, may move.
Movement speed is important for pretty much every task, but to a varying degree.
Agility: This attribute increases the speed at which a creature works in the same way as strength a
creature with maximum agility and strength can move around three times faster than a creature with
minimum agility and strength.
Endurance: Reduces the rate at which dwarves become exhausted, important for physically demanding tasks.
Toughness: Reduces physical damage. Used by physically demanding tasks.
Mental Attributes
Analytical Ability
Focus
20 Attributes,

alongside appearance modifiers, are inherited through dwarven genetics.

should be noted that all creatures, not just dwarves, have attributes (for instance, the attributes of animals attached
to your fortress are visible on the Animals view). The attributes of creatures that are not tied to your fortresswildlife,
unwelcome visitors, hostile sapient creatures, caravan traders and guardswill be hidden from you.
21 It

28

 Willpower: Willpower directly reduces exertion and pain effects, useful for physically demanding
tasks.
Creativity
Intuition
Patience
Memory
Linguistic Ability
Spatial Sense
Kinesthetic Sense: Most skills involving any movement at all (lots of them), and many non-skilled
tasks as well are affected by Kinesthetic Sense.
Social Awareness
Physical attributes will increase or decrease over time, depending on whether a dwarf uses or doesnt use
them in their day to day tasks. Thus your Miner will become very tough and very strong while working on
the job, and would make a good recruit for your military in their next, ahem, role.
Another modifier is a dwarfs personality traits. For the most part personality traits only affect social
skills and appointed jobs that involve working with others - expeditions leaders, managers, brokers, and
mayors use them, as do high nobles. There is one, perseverance, that is thought to affect the length of
breaks that your dwarves will take, and might thus be important for all skillsyour dwarves will obviously
do less work overall if theyre always on break. However, Toady has never confirmed this.
The final hidden element of a dwarfs role is his or her preferences. Dwarves have innate preferences for
certain items, materials, organisms, and even colors and shapes (I want my coffin to be a yellow square, you
hear me!). Dwarves like seeing things they liketheyll get a happy thought from itand they like working
with them even more, producing above-average quality goods when working on items or with materials
that they like. For this reason a dwarf that likes beds will make a better carpenter than a dwarf that like
breastplates and vice versa. Having the right sort of preferences can be an important bonus in a dwarfs
work, meriting weight in the role calculations.
Now that weve examined all of the elements besides skill that are weighed into roles, the next logical
question is: how are role numbers calculated? As it turns out, this is not a trivial question. There are,
essentially, three ways of thinking aboutand hence usingroles. Lets first examine th default behavior,
which can be seen and modified in the Roles Options menu (Options > Roles):

Dwarf Therapist takes a dwarfs attributes, skills, traits, and preferences and weighs the ones that matter
for a certain labor by the amounts inputted here. It then performs a cumulative distribution function
on the results, giving you how fit that dwarf is for that role as a percentage calculated against the current
dwarves in your fortress. The result of this statistical trickery is that while the result is a current rating,
its non-transferable (a 75% rating in one skill is not directly comparable to a 75% rating in another) and
non-preservable (role ratings will resettle every migrant wave, or every time a child grows up). Its also razor

29

sharp: since perhaps nine out of ten average dwarves are unskilled in a particular labor, and since the CDF
is based on probability density, a dwarf that happens to be even a novice at a labor will shoot up to 90+
percent compatibility, and reaching proficient rank is usually enough for any dwarf to hit 100 percent. For
the purposes of this guide, I call this rating skill rank.
Changing the second option in Options > Roles, Default Skill Weight, to 0 removes it from the
equation. With skills no longer counting for anything, the role rating now shows what I refer to as basal
compatibilitythe results of a CDF crunch of your dwarves attributes, traits, and preferences alone. This
is a useful view of your fortress in retrospect, as you might discover that the weaponsmith you appointed
from scratch in wave one is completely outclassed by several dwarves in waves two, three, and four. Of
course by that point that dwarf would have put on so much distance in terms of skill that it doesnt matter
anymorebut its still an interesting statistic to know. Its also much less statistically sharp than skill rank
is, because base stats dont vary nearly as much as skill does.
The last and most useful function that roles serve is one that answers the question Which of these
dwarves will reach legendary status the quickest? In such a distribution an unskilled dwarf with minimum
stats will be rated at zero percent, an accomplished one with middling stats would be a fifty, and that
legendary +5 dwarf with maximum stats and perfect preferences and whatnot would be a one hundred: a
true role rating. So, how do you turn this wonderful ranking on?
Well. . . you cant. Its a pipe dream. There are simply too many variables involved in job completion
length and skills gain and no ones ever fully done anything beyond rudimentary research on the topic - its
very complicated and not nearly as glamerous as combat weapon penetration rates. Even the weights that
the program uses are the result of conjecturetheres just no hard !!SCIENCE!! to base the whole thing on
as of now, and thats the reason that we have to use skill rank, drawbacks that it has, as a substitute.

7.2

Using Roles

Weve talked before about the utility of clicking on the labor headers and
having your dwarves sorted in ascending order of experience. But did you
know you can actually change this behavior? Indeed, right-clicking on
anywhere on the labor headers will bring up a menu that allows you to
change the current labor sorting behavior, as seen on the right.22
The first option, Level, is the default option, and that makes sense.
The third option is pretty much the same as the first, except that skill
rate (which the amount of skill gained every time a labor in that category is completed) is modified by, you
guessed it, the dwarfs role, and so will vary a little from straight up experience levelbut experience is
still the most important indicator of relative skill gain, so it wont change too much. However, the one we
want right now is Role Rating. Click on it. Now, whenever you sort a column, the dwarves will be listed by
their adeptness for that labor. Assuming you turned the role tooltip display on, as we did in Formatting
Your Display, then you can hover over a labor box to see the exactness of the matchif you skipped that
section, you can toggle the behavior on now by going to Options > Roles > Show role information in
labor columns.
If you play around with sorting the columns now, you will notice two things. The first is that dwarves
with the labor enabled and those with it disabled are considered, and listed, separately from one another:
under the ascending sort, dwarves active with that job come first, followed by those that are not. The second
is that in terms of basal compatibility skill is (mostly) irrelevant; beyond the fact that we took it out of the
calculations in the previous section, this indicates that physical attribute gain from performing labors that
use that attribute is simply not that high. And so it may be that your primary mason is buried nearer to
the bottom of the list, with a compatibility of 14%, with a long list of mostly dabbling dwarves that outrank
him:
22 You can also change the sorting behavior of the dwarf column, to sort by ID (a somewhat useful alternative to grouping
by migrant wave) and age (useless). Unfortunately, it will not save this behavior, and attempting to reverse the sort will send
it right back into alphabetical order.

30

Lucky number 15? Well, maybe not.

In this case the reason that the dwarf that became my chief mason was so incompatible with his job is
that he was part of my starting seven, and so his attributes were randomand the random number god
did not favor me in this case. Its important, however, to realize when basal compatibility is important and
when they are not. While basal compatibility will tell you which of two comparable dwarves would be better
at a certain job, they are no replacement for hard-won experience, and so that dwarf, incompatible though
he may be, is many times better than any of the laymen that pretend to also do his job. Once you put three
or four levels of experience points between two dwarves, their roles lose all relevance.
So then, when are roles important? As it so happens, my fortress just experienced a migratory wave,
and something that my fortress critically lacks right now is metalworkers. Im a big believer in expensive,
well-decorated furniture for my dwarves, and Ive got a skilled gem setter running around encrusting beds in
locally-mined sapphire, but hes not keeping up with the demand. I have a lot of extra fuel, some gold bars,
and a couple of metalsmiths forges idling around, so I decide that the solution to my problem is to put two
of these new migrants to work as dedicated metalcrafters, studding every piece of jewelry they can get their
hands on in gold. Since no one has a skill advantage in this arena (my fortress has zero metalcrafters), and
all but two of my dwarves are pretty much useless anyway, I want to pick out the best two dwarves available
from this wave. How do I go about doing it? By combining two things weve learned so far, grouping and
sorting, with a thirdroles.
Try doing this exercise yourselfyou need not even have a fresh migrant wave. First, group your dwarves
by migration wave, collapse them, and open the latest wave. Now, with the sorting method set appropriately,
hit Metalcrafting to sort these dwarves by role score. Now look down your list.

This migrant wave is almost fresh. For extra clarity, unnecessary details have been omitted.
In my case, the first dwarf on the list was an Adept miner with a score of 98.1 percent; but mining is a
useful skill and Id rather he cut rock for the fortress, so I keep going down. The next option is better: a
ranger whose only real usable skill is hunting, and a farmer with some assorted non-essential skills, both of
whom are easily replaceable. I right click on their names and hit Clear all Labors to quickly wipe their
workloads, designate metalcrafting for the pair, and then hit Commit to send the changes to the game. I
even give them nicknames, to be extra sure I wont forget about them:

Notice the change is sorting behavior to reflect changes in labor designation.

Voila! I have now committed two well-suited dwarves to their new tasks. Works flawlessly, right? Well,
almost. There are other, similarly replaceable dwarves also in the fortress that would make better candidates
for this job, but hunting them down is a pain. I could find the best-suited dwarves in the fortress by turning
off grouping and then sorting the column, but then Id bump into another problem: which dwarves are
replaceable, and which ones am I training up or holding onto with certain roles in mind? In this respect,
your tools are crudemaybe you remember exactly or can deduce from the labor settings what role each
dwarf is set for, but in a fortress of 200, you probably dont. In large fortresses with many industries, its
simply not possible to easily keep track of so many variables at once.
We can solve this problem by using nicknames aggressively, designating all dwarves committed to a
task with a nick, and then using the Has Nickname grouping in the view. Setting so many nicknames is
tedious, however, and if you dont like using them then youre out of luck. Or are you? There is another,
31

more powerful solution that will come later in this guide: filter scripts. For more details on this, see Filter
Scripts for the scoop.

7.3

Creating Custom Roles

If you right click on Roles on the menu bar it will bring up a menu with several role-modification related
entries on it. Dwarf Therapist allows the creation of custom roles through this dialogue, and you can also
export and import other players custom roles definitions. If you dont like a default role, you can overwrite
it by building and saving a custom role with the same name.23 Click on New Custom Role and it should
bring up this dialogue:

23 You

can also do this by exiting Dwarf Therapist and browsing to and modifying the game data.ini in the programs install
directory: see Modifying Game Data for more information. A word of warning: your changes will not be preserved should
you update Dwarf Therapist.

32

This is the editing interface for creating a custom role, and clearly demarkates the four components of a
role. There is a scripting option availablethis is a plug-in for Filter Scripts that well talk about later.
And finally, the italic text at the bottom of the window tells us that roles changes will not be read in until
you reread your dwarves, so we will have to do so after were done here.
Dwarf Therapist ships with a pretty comprehensive role libraryit even has lawdwarf (weak) and liar
options, and provides role information for jobs that are not implemented into the game, such as alchemy.
However, there is one feature that it lacks, and that is a role setting for haulers. Ye peasants do their job
best when theyre quick and strong, but theres no role for such a thing available! The solution, of course,
is to write our own.
Start by copying role settings from a similarly physically demanding jobsay, mining. Scroll down to
mining in theCopy From menu (or hit M while the menu is active to get there more quickly) and click
Copy. This will copy all of the role settings for minters into the dialogue. Our haulers need not be lovers of
picks, so lets remove it from the Preferences screenright click on it and hit Remove Selected. Skills are
irrelevant, too (especially for an unskilled hauler), so remove that as well. Actually, for a hauler thats going
to be carrying pretty much everything in the fortress back and forth, preferences are unimportanttheyll
bump into pretty much everythingso lets drop stone, too.
Hauling is an unskilled job, so the only things that matter for it is the speed and endurance of the dwarf.
That means that the Strength, Endurance, Willpower, Agility, and Toughness attributes are at a premium,
and the rest can be gotten rid of. The only Trait that matters to use is self-disciplinedont want them
taking two-season breaks, after allso lets add that into the mix, too. And, of course, lets give your new
role a name: Hauler seems appropriate.
This is what the important settings in the interface should look like at the end of our little exercise:

Hit Save to save your new custom role. Now, whenever you go to the Custom Roles dialogue box,
hovering over Edit Custom Role or Delete Custom Role will give you the option to perform that action on
your new role. Custom roles can be used in custom views and in labor optimizationwell see an application
for them laterbut cannot yet be bound to custom professions or to labors.

33

7.4

Exporting and Importing Custom Roles

Its also possible to export custom roles, which creates a Dwarf Therapist export file (.dtp) that can saved and
then passed along to another installation of the utility by importing it. You can export your custom roles and
then upload them on the web (preferably the Dwarf Fortress File Depot: http://www.dffd.wimbli.com/)
to share them with other players, or you can download one from the web and then import them into Dwarf
Therapist so that you can use them too. By the end of this guide were going to generate a lot of custom
bits of code for the program to use, including a couple of custom roles, but for now lets just ignore the
importing and exporting options, and talk about something else: custom professions.

Custom Professions

Dwarf Fortress has a lot of professions, and even more skills, available to your dwarves. In fact, learning what
each profession and skill corresponds too is one of the hardest part of learning to play the game, because
theres just so many of them. You can add to this sprawl by creating your own professions, assigning multiple
labors to one unified profession. This ability has its uses, and in this section were going to use it to unify
hauling labors.
Whether your dwarf is hauling around sacks or focused on their primary task is usually an all-or-nothing
thing: either theyre committed to their job, or theyre not. Its not very useful to have dwarves only perform
certain hauling tasks, unless youre getting into the extreme end of fortress management and optimization,
so most players of the game have them either all on or all off on a dwarf-by-dwarf basis. Were also going
to assign the Hauler role that we built in the previous section, Creating Custom Roles, to this new,
unified profession.

8.1

Creating Custom Professions

The dialogue for creating custom professions is located in one of
two places, and you can get there either by hitting Create Custom
Profession at the bottom of the Custom Professions dock, or by
right clicking on a dwarf, going to Custom Professions, and hitting New custom profession from this dwarf. This second method
starts you off with the labors that that dwarf had enabled checked,
and so is faster if you have a dwarf already set to the labors you
wantand after a quick profession sort I discover that I do, in
fact, have a peasant hanging around my fortress, so I open it up
off of him. Lo and behold, the ten hauling subskills are already
selected. I name the profession Hauler and give it a red circle
icon, one of the spare ones in the utilitys default set thats not
already used by a professions. To make it clearer that this icon is
for haulers, Im going to use the text and text coloration option
provided in the window to draw a white H over my icon. You can
also add a background color, but the regular icon set keeps a transparent white background, so I will too. I hit ok and the profession
is now listed under Custom Professions in the Custom Professions and Icons dock (which is the only way to edit or delete a
custom profession, fyi). To make it appear in the display, you have
to commit your changes and reload your dwarves.
To work the way we intended, make sure you dont check the
Mask option in the windowthis will change the behavior so that
the custom profession only masks the dwarfs ordinary profession,
and it will not allow you to make designation changes. You can

34

remove a dwarfs custom profession designation with Reset to default profession and then a commit to
the game.
You can create a mask more directly by right clicking on the dwarf and then going to Set custom profession name under the custom professions menu, and then
inputting a name: once committed this will change the
dwarfs profession to a custom one. This is a by-dwarf
operation that basically mirrors how custom professions
work within the game, replacing the dwarfs professional
name with the new string but not changing anything else,
without labor assignments or a custom icon, and with no facilities for transferring the profession to other
dwarves. Thus its like a nickname applied to the dwarfs profession, and in fact provides the same whos
this dwarf? functionality that we previously used to make nicknames useful. However, since nicknames can
be more easily seen at a glance within the Dwarf Therapist utility (and dont get in the way of this features
more advanced version), I recommend sticking with them for this function.
For now, the functionality of custom professions is fairly limited. What youve created is essentially a
triggerable mask. Although the profession icon has changed and although the dwarf will be listed under
their new profession within Dwarf Therapist, actually triggering the profession is annoying: you have to
right click on the dwarf, then click on Custom Professions, then click on the profession as it appears in the
menu. This will toggle the labors associated with that profession on, and turn off all others in the process.
You have to do so much work that this shortcut becomes anything but!

8.2

Exporting and Importing Professions

Custom professions is actually one of the two Dwarf Therapist

features we discuss (alongside nicknames) that are present
within the base game, although custom professions have less
utility within the gamethey simply replace the dwarfs
professional name. If you want to assign the same profession
to multiple dwarves you have to do so manually, retyping it
in each time. If you assign a custom profession to a dwarf
within the game, but dont import it, his professional name
will change in Dwarf Therapist but nothing else will (essenBinmaker extrordinare.
tially the same as setting a mask). To make the profession
more available to Dwarf Therapist, allowing you to more
easily assign it to multiple dwarves, give it an icon, and use it as a labor designation shortcut, you have to
import it. To do so, hit File > Import Professions from DFitll give you a quick confirmation window
telling you how many professions youve imported.
Much as with roles, custom professions can be made within the utility and exported, or taken from
someone else and importedthis is actually going to be a common theme between the various customizable
functions were discussing in this section of the guide. There are even dialogues that let you pick and choose
which professions you want to export or import. Both options are available from the File menu.

35

Custom Grid Views

So far weve stuck with the views that the utility generates for uslabor, military, etceteraand the most
interactive thing weve done with them is switch our labor screen to the beautifully structured, unfortunately
named NO SPACERS version (that is, if youve read Formatting Your Display). However, its also
possible to define your own grid viewshere well use it to make our own, better, labor management view.

9.1

Creating Your Own Grid Views

Unfortunately, unlike the rest of the advanced utilities were discussing in

this section of the guide custom grid views can only be created through
its associated dock, so if you dont have it open already youre going to
have to do so at least for the duration of your editing.
Inside the dock you will find the grid views that the utility comes preloaded with, but they will be grayed out. You can create a new, editable
grid view in one of two ways: either by hitting Add New Grid View,
which gives you a blank, or by right clicking on and copying one of the
views that is already hardcoded in, which will generate you an editable
copy of the view. Copy the Labors NO SPACERS view now, then right
click on it and hit Edit (you can also copy it again or delete it entirely
in this menu). This will open the Grid View dialogue:

36

The Grid Views dock.

The very first thing you should do is this:

Now if you add that view from the Add Views drop-down menu and delete the old one:

NO SPACERS, banished!
The Grid View window is organized into two columns, sets on the left and component columns on the
right. Set names are not displayed anywhere on-screen, so theyre mostly organizational, but ordering your
columns causes the program to automatically apply the sets chosen coloration to all columns in the set.
One column in the game is immutableyour dwarves by default, or your animals if youve copied the animal
view instead. This will always appear on the left edge, and does not appear in this listing.
Right clicking on a set allows you to either modify it or delete it entirely. Editing the set allows you to
change its name (again, merely organizational) and its colorationthere are a number of predefined options,
but by going to the [...] option you can choose and use any hex value.24 Clicking on an empty space in
the box creates a new, empty set for editing. To rearrange the position of a set, simply grab and tug it up
or down.
The columns themselves are color-codes to match their sets, but if you edit them youll be able to
override the base set color and set your own. Right clicking anywhere will also bring up a complete menu
list of possible columns to add to your view. You can also add or remove spacers heresince they dont
serve too great a function, if you dont have the horizontal sceen space for them in a view, removing them
might be extremely helpful.
Now, lets make some modifications to our new and improved Labor view.25

Our Labor View at the beginning of this exercise.

The first thing we should do is remove alchemy. Assuming youre not using mods, its not implemented
into the game, and so it has no place in the labor view. Go to Other Jobs, right-click on Alchemy, and hit
Remove.
There isnt ever a real reason to remove Cleaning as an enabled labor, eitherwhen your dwarves actually
perform that job, its a blessingso lets remove that too. This has the benefit of allowing you to remove
all labors from your dwarf with the right click option without removing cleaning as well.
Though Architecture is held in-game to be an administrative job, despite having a labor assigned to it,
its really an engineering one. Now that its left all on its lonesome on the right edge of our screen, we have
an excuse to move it under the engineering banner. Im placing it between mechanics and pump operating
on the banner.
24 For some reason choosing a new color sometimes doesnt change the color of the header. Going through the menus and just
pressing OK again fixes this bug.
25 Since the publication of the first version of this guide the labor view constructed here has been packaged into the base
utility as the Labor-Alt view.

37

Animal care is similarly unimplemented in vanilla at the momentyour animals either heal up, or they
die, and theres nothing you can do about it. So its safe to send it the same way as alchemy, because even
if some of your dwarves do have skill in it theyll never get to use it.
Feeding prisoners and the wounded is always a priority job that is or should be enabled on all dwarves
by default, pretty much even the grumbly onesthe rare -20 happiness penalty is minor compared to the
cost of a tantrum spiral. So these two columns are safe to remove, too.
Now that weve removed useless labors from the display, lets do some organization amongst the tasks
that are left. Farming in particular is a mightily large category, and I often get lost looking for my Weaver
somewhere between my Potash Maker and my Presser, or even start designating the wrong labors on a dwarf!
I have a similar problem with the labors under the Crafts header. Lets divide these sections between a
few different categories.
The first new category I create is beekeeping. Beekeeping is rarely used by players because its
an extremely labor-intensive and limited form of food production that produces low-value goods and
is heavily bugged. Assuming the bugs with the industry are resolved, it might become more useful
in future versions of the game, but for now well relegate it to the sideline. Beekeeping and Wax
Working are both jobs that are only ever used in this industry. The new color of choice is obvious
yellow. Open up the customization menu and select the weaker yellow of the two that are available
in the menu. This is still pretty bright, though, so lets weaken the colors a teeny bit further. In the
end the color I used had an RGB value of 255-255-157 (alpha 255), but you can adjust it to your
liking.
Woodcrafting is better off alongside its peers in the woodworking column.
In a similar vein, stonecrafting is better alongside masonry and stone detailing.
Pump operating and siege engineering fit a certain theme, so while were doing all
this rearranging lets give them their own column to the immediate right of their current
location. I use the default light grey color for this column.
Lets also move Siege Engineering to the right edge of the engineering set, to match
Siege Operating opposite it.
Butchery, tanning, leatherworking, and bone carving are all components of the meat
and leather industry, and so belong togethor. For this one I used a muddy leathery brown,
RGB values 170 170 127.
Since theres no Other column anymore, lets set the hauling labors to their base white to
make more sense of the skill-less labors.
Pottery and Glazing work as a pair. For these two I choise a light pink, RGB value
255-225-240.
Shearing, Spinning, Weaving, Clothesmaking, Dying, and Strand Extraction all have to do
with the clothesmaking industry. For this one I used a downsampled version of one of the base
pastel blues, RGB 155-205-255.
Glassmaking becomes the odd one out of the old crafts column, but folds nicely into
jewelryglass is just a fancy gem that can also be turned into furniture after all.

38

The remaining parts of the large farming cluster were a little trickier to organize. I ended up dividing
it into two tranches with some color variation betwixt them (in color order, default, 218-199-175, default
again, 85-170-127, 193-191-171, 85-170-127 again).
Then I toned down the medical task colors because the text is really hard to read in that dark a color. I
moved this one down all the way to 140-112-114.
Now some name changes were in order. Why is it Farming (Fields)? Lets just set that to Farming. Why
is it Haul/Push Vehicles? Whenever you are using a vehicle you are pushing it; when you are hauling it to
and from a stockpile it falls under Item Hauling. Lets just change that to Push Vehicles. While it is true
that bowyers are only really crossbow-makers, as they dont make anything else, bowery is a much shorter
and more elegant name: lets change it to that.
Finally, glassmaking and bone carving are kind of lopped onto their sets, and siege operating folds into
siege engineering, so I fade those halfway down the coloration scale to individualize them.
The finished result:

Its organized, easy to view, nicely colored, and removed of all un-necessary bits; half an hour well spent.
Theres a full spread on the next page. Although we didnt use the capacity here, any custom roles you create
will appear under the Roles selection menu, and can thus be added to custom grid views you createyou
can very easily add a Hauler role fitness column (we defined this custom role as an example back in the
section Formatting Your Display) to your Labor view, for instance. Unfortunately one thing you
cannot do yet is is add labor columns for custom professionsthis feature is currently under development.

9.2

Exporting and Importing Grid Views

The ability to export and import grid views is actually very important, and both options are available from
the File header under the taskbar. In the above section I spent about half an hour organizing, modifying,
and documenting the changes I made in order to create a more useful and more readable professions grid.
You can spare yourself at least some of the trouble by simply downloading and importing my exported grid
view (I say at least some because theres bound to be some things with it you want to tweak) from the Dwarf
Fortress File Depot: http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=7880.

39

40

Part IV

Expert Features
10

Filter Scripts

Dwarf Fortress provides two different, easy-to-use tools for organizing your dwarves. In this section well
introduce a third, much more advanced tool for the task: filter scripts. With custom filter scripts you
can filter out those dwarves that you dont need to see right now from those that you do in a much more
powerful, and much more refinable, way than grouping or sorting allows. However, its also a challenging
thing to do, as it requires that you learn and master the programs syntax for the task; indeed, if you do not
have experience with writing programming code you could very easily become lost here.
Go to the dedicated Scripting item on the menubar and hit Add New Filter Script to bring up the
script creation and modification dialogue:

As you can see, on the right side there is a fairly detailed demonstration of what filter scripts are meant to
do, and then further down the list we get a list of methods we can use and then several tabulated references
for labor, trait, skill, and attribute ids. You can actually collapse this away to the side or expand it to take
up the whole view by dragging the right edge of the box.
41

Filter scripts work by generating a boolean test for your dwarves and then iterating through them. Dwarf
Therapist handles looping for you, so your job is simply to write a useful filter: basically, at the end of the
application of your filter to a dwarf, we want to end up with either a true or false statement. If the
result is false, the dwarf will not be displayed; if it is true, they will be. All of the commands that you can
enter into the script editor are all meant to be called on the d object, the abstracted dwarf in question,
through the dot operator: d.is child(), for instance. Heres a table of the commands available to you:
Command

Returns

Description

is child()
boolean Returns true if d is a child, else false.
is adult()
boolean Returns true if d is an adult, else false.
boolean Returns true if d is an animal, else false.
is animal()
profession()
string
Returns the basal profession string of a dwarf.
raw profession()
integer Returns the raw basal profession ID number of a dwarf.
custom profession name()
string
Returns the raw custom profession string, NULL if none.
nice name()
string
Returns the nickname string, NULL if none.
string
Returns comma seperated list of noble positions.
noble position()
get raw happiness()
integer Returns the raw hapiness value of the dwarf.
attribute(attribute id)
integer Given the ID number, returns a dwarven attribute value.
boolean Returns true if the dwarf in an active military squad.
active military()
squad id()
integer Returns squad ID (from 0 by order of formation).
can set labors()
boolean Returns false if dwarf is a child or baby.
labor enabled(id)
boolean Is this labor (by id number) enabled on this dwarf.
is labor state dirty(id) boolean Returns whether there are pending changes for this skill.
labor rating(id)
integer Returns the dwarfs skill in a labor.
trait(trait id)
integer Returns raw trait value by ID number.
total assigned labors()
integer Returns the total number of assigned labors for this dwarf.
Optionally takes a boolean value: if set to false, does not include hauling labors.
skill level(int skill id, bool raw, bool precise)
Returns a floating point value, or float.
Raw uses the uncapped skill level, precise returns a decimal skill level.
In addition to being able to call on attributes through attribute(), you can also call on them directly by
name:
int
int
int
int
int
int
int

strength()
agility()
toughness()
endurance()
recuperation()
disease_resistance()
analytical_ability()

int
int
int
int
int
int
int

focus()
willpower()
creativity()
intuition()
patience()
memory()
linguistic_ability()

int
int
int
int
int

spatial_sense()
musicality()
kinesthetic_sense()
empathy()
social_awareness()

Unfortunately there are no equivalent shortcut for traits or for labors.

As for logical construction, Dwarf Therapist uses standard boolean operation notation. || stands for
OR, and two statements linked in such a way will return true if either or both are true. && means AND, and
will only return true if both statements are true. Statements based around a == operator will be evaluated
for equivalency, and will return true if they are, and false if they are not. Statements surrounded by ()
operators will be evaluated ahead in PEMDAS order, much like they are in algebra. Finally, adding a !
before a boolean statement negates it - false becomes true and true becomes false. Integers can be compared
with < and > operators as well as the == one. Strings must be surrounded in double quotes, "Like This".

42

10.1

Writing Complex Scripts

Now that we have the basic syntax down, lets use filtering to solve a non-trivial problem. Whenever a
large migrant waves arrive at a fortress, or even a small one in a lot of cases, what happens is that you pick
the best of the bunch and set them to work immediately, and get the rest of the wave doing generic tasks
that are plentiful and easy to designatehauling things, getting rid of loose stone, building walls and other
constructions, smoothing and engraving the fortress living spaces, and so forth. Integrating a new wave into
your fortress is a slow but steady process, involving picking off individual dwarves for tasks you need done
on a longer term one by one. Some will become jewelers, some will start operating furnaces, some will build
parts for your pump stack, some will be enlisted in the miltiary - and some will remain plain old haulers.
In Using Roles we discussed combining groups, sorts, and roles to find ideal dwarves for a particular
task within a group, but we were hamstrung by the limitations of a group: theres no easy way to group
gainfully employed dwarves committed to their tasks apart from part-time ones that arent. Your options
were to make do with grouping them into migrant waves, which doesnt usually end with you selecting the
best available dwarf in the fortress for the task, or not grouping them at all, which requires you browse
through dwarves that are already working on something and risks switching the tasks of a dwarf youd
designated for a new role earlier (a problem discussed in Assigning Nicknames). Were going to neatly
resolve this little problem with a script were going to write.

In my fort I just started funneling my dwarves into tower fortress building duty.
Whenever you write a script the first question youve got to ask is, what are the characteristics of a
dwarf that I want (if youre writing an inclusive script), or what are the characteristics of a dwarf that I
dont want (if youre writing an exclusive one). In this case were writing an inclusive filter meant to root
out migrant dwarves that are available for full-time assignment to useful tasks. If we think about what this
implies, we can come up with a number of characteristics for such dwarves (in order of complexity):
1. They have all hauling labors enabled. This is one of the most apparent indicators of a working-class
dwarf, but its nowhere near exclusive.
2. They dont have a nickname. Assuming you follow the advice given in Assigning Nicknames,
nicked dwarves have already been dedicated to something. Were not actually going to consider this
one, because dedicated nicked dwarves are already excluded by the condition above.
3. They have the masonry and/or stone detailing labors enabled, but are never above adequate skill
in the former (since actually building stone blocks is assigned to dedicated masons), and never above
competent in the latter (I consider skilled the breaking point for when an engraver is actually
worth his salt, and should be taken out of the working-class pool).
4. They are never enlisted in the military (at least, not permanently). At least in my fortress, once a
crossbowdwarf, always a crossbowdwarf slash hunter.
5. They never have certain key labors that are handled by dedicated dwarves enabled (mining, carpentry, woodcutting, stonecrafting, cooking, brewing, any of the metalsmithing tasks, either of the jewelry
tasks, and clothesmaking). The precise composition of this list may vary somewhat for you, but most
players learn to dedicate certain tasks to certain dwarves to maximize results very quickly.
6. If they are skilled in certain useless or niche tasks (animal caretaking, small animal dissection, fish
dissection, bee keeping, wax working, soap making) they have those tasks enabled. No one creates
extra work for themselves by actually turning these off, at least not until you want this dwarf doing
something for you.

43

Now this is a pretty extensive list of characteristics common to our working class dwarves, and most
of them require we do some thinking through as theyre not immediately obvious. Hopefully this set of
conditions both accurate and precise enough to work. To write such a complex script, lets break it down
into individual steps.
All Hauling Labors are Enabled
This ones pretty annoying; we have to form an AND string out of labor enabled() == true calls. However,
a smarter solution that requires less work, both by the program and by us, would be to call
total assigned labors() twice, once asking for labors with hauling included, once without, and subtract
to see if we get the number we want. The behavior of this command is actually non-trivial: not only regular
hauling but the two medical chores are folded in as well, and this isnt said anywhere in the documentation
(well, now it is). That means that our magic number is 11:
d.total_assigned_labors(true)---d.total_assigned_labors(false) == 11
And if you plug that into your script editor and hit Test Script this is what youll see:

This script alone reduced my fortress from 70 to 38 candidates! In fact, the capacity to filter your dwarves
by whether or not they have hauling enabled is actually extremely useful on its own, and theres no other
way to do this kind of thing in the program. So lets keep it! Give the script a name and hit Save. We
can actually also write a quick Hauling Disabled script, too, now:
d.total_assigned_labors(true)---d.total_assigned_labors(false) <= 10
If Masonry or Stone Detailing are Enabled, they are at a low Skill Level
Masonry is labor number 13 on the list, and stone detailing is number 12. We write separate tests, one
asking if the dwarf has masonry enabled but is below skill level 3 in it, and one asking if they have stone
detailing enabled but are below skill level 4 in it. We then link these with an OR. This is what the complete
condition test looks like:
(((d.labor_enabled(13) == true && d.labor_rating(13) < 3) ||
d.labor_enabled(13) == false)||
((d.labor_enabled(12) == true && d.labor_rating(12) < 4) ||
d.labor_enabled(12) == false))
Then we create a new Available for Work script, and within it link the two statements weve written
so far with an AND. So far, so good: on to the next condition.
They are Never Enlisted in the Military
This ones elementary, just test if the dwarf is in an active military squad and slap a ! on it:
!d.active_military()
This isnt that useful as a standalone filter because theres a group for it. Next!
They Never have Certain Key Labors Enabled
This one involves a lot of table lookup:
44

!d.labor_enabled(47)
!d.labor_enabled(48)
!d.labor_enabled(29)
!d.labor_enabled(11)
!d.labor_enabled(33)

&&
&&
&&
&&
&&

!d.labor_enabled(38)
!d.labor_enabled(45)
!d.labor_enabled(50)
!d.labor_enabled(51)
!d.labor_enabled(49)

&&
&&
&&
&&
&&

!d.labor_enabled(00) &&
!d.labor_enabled(53) &&
!d.labor_enabled(46) &&

If you drop the negations and use OR statements, you pretty much get a list of key dwarves in your
fortress: I call it Key Dwarves. Its very useful for getting rid of new migrants who happen to be novices
in skills that are dedicated to, say, my legendary woodcutter, so that they dont take up room at my
carpenters shop while my real bedmaker sits around doing nothing in particular.
Niche and Useless Labors Still On
This is pretty much an inversion of the above: there we had key labors off, here we have useless ones on,
but since its conditional (and we dont have if statements available to us) its a little more complex. Its
important to note that dabbling is considered skill zerocompletely unskilled is considered skill level -1. So
its time for some more table lookup:
((d.labor_rating(16)
((d.labor_rating(43)
((d.labor_rating(26)
((d.labor_rating(72)
((d.labor_rating(71)

>
>
>
>
>

0
0
0
0
0

&&
&&
&&
&&
&&

d.labor_enabled(16))
d.labor_enabled(43))
d.labor_enabled(26))
d.labor_enabled(72))
d.labor_enabled(71))

||
||
||
||
||

(d.labor_rating(16)
(d.labor_rating(43)
(d.labor_rating(26)
(d.labor_rating(72)
(d.labor_rating(71)

<=
<=
<=
<=
<=

0))
0))
0))
0))
0))

&&
&&
&&
&&

(d.total_assigned_labors(true)---d.total_assigned_labors(false) == 11) &&

// masonry and stone detailing test
(((d.labor_enabled(13) == true && d.labor_rating(13) < 3)
|| d.labor_enabled(13) == false) ||
((d.labor_enabled(12) == true && d.labor_rating(12) < 4)
|| d.labor_enabled(12) == false)) &&
!active_military() &&
(!d.labor_enabled(47) && !d.labor_enabled(48) && !d.labor_enabled(29) &&
!d.labor_enabled(11) && !d.labor_enabled(33) && !d.labor_enabled(38) &&
!d.labor_enabled(45) && !d.labor_enabled(50) && !d.labor_enabled(51) &&
!d.labor_enabled(49) && !d.labor_enabled(00) && !d.labor_enabled(53) &&
!d.labor_enabled(46)) &&
((d.labor_rating(16) > 0 && d.labor_enabled(16)) || (d.labor_rating(16) <=
((d.labor_rating(43) > 0 && d.labor_enabled(43)) || (d.labor_rating(43) <=
((d.labor_rating(26) > 0 && d.labor_enabled(26)) || (d.labor_rating(26) <=
((d.labor_rating(72) > 0 && d.labor_enabled(72)) || (d.labor_rating(72) <=
((d.labor_rating(71) > 0 && d.labor_enabled(71)) || (d.labor_rating(71) <=

0))
0))
0))
0))
0))

&&
&&
&&
&&

Those are all our conditions; behold, the completed script!

Over the course of composing this script we actually wrote three other useful
scripts, which I think is a pretty good demonstration of their utility.26 Unfortunately
Dwarf Therapist does not provide any facilities for exporting or importing filter
scripts, which is a unfortunate, because filter scripts get very complicated and having
to copy other peoples scripts manually is very annoying, as even a single error or
typo will likely invalidate the entire thing. If you like the scripts we wrote here, save
yourself some trouble and simply copy paste them into your filters list!
26 Since

the publication of the first version of this guide all of these scripts have been packaged into the base installation.

45

11

Optimization Plans

Optimization plans are a (somewhat complicated) way to automate the labor assignment process that weve
so far been doing manually. To access it, go to Optimization > New Optimization Plan, which should
bring up a screen similar to the following one:

This isnt the easiest of screens to piece apart, so lets look at what each option is meant to do first. It
isnt immediately apparent, but the labor optimizer works by assigning jobs in a ratio-wise manner. The two
numbers in the top right corner tell you how many dwarves are being considered, and how many of those
dwarves will have their labors specialized in the current assignment scheme. If you do not select any dwarves
the optimizer will work with all available dwarves, but if you select a dwarf (by clicking on their name) or
multiple dwarves (by dragging the mouse down dwarves in a column, or by clicking on the first dwarf and
shift-clicking on the last one) it will constrain itself to those dwarves.27 You can use filters to only display
those dwarves that you want to be optimizedI recommend using the Available for Work filter we just
27 You

can also select all with the Ctrl + A hotkey.

46

wrote in the last section, Writing Complex Scripts.

Lets use the optimizer for a simple tasksay, assigning (role-optimized) dedicated wood burner and
furnace operator from betwixt a few dwarves. Open a new optimization plan again. Set max jobs per
dwarf to 1. This obviously restricts the maximum number of jobs a dwarf can be assigned to just one job,
which makes sense given what were trying to do. Disable auto-assign haulersthis is a more advanced
feature that well talk about in a moment. Now set Percent Total Jobs to 100. This number tells the
optimizer that we want all of the jobs that these dwarves can be assigned to be assigned in our optimization
scheme.
Roll your mouse over the empty white space and right click to bring up a menu of labors, and select first
Wood Burning and second Smelting from the list. You can add any number of labors to the list in this
manner, and you can easily delete any labors youve already added by right clicking and hitting Remove
Selected.

The first thing listed here is the jobthe labor title that youve select. The next item is the role by which
the optimizer is examining your dwarves fitness: the one assigned to the job at hand by default. Its possible
to use custom roles here. For the task at hand, however, leave this as is. Priority, meanwhile, changes the
weight with which role fitness is considered, and so shifts overlaps in favor of the higher-priority labor. The
rati changes the amount of dwarves that will be assigned this labor by the optimizer relative to the set. For
any particular job the ratio is divided by the sum of the ratios, giving you the percentage of jobs that will
be assigned under that labor, which when multiplied by the number of jobs to be assigned gives you the last
columnthe worker count.
We dont have to actually change anything here: everything seems to be in order, with one job going
out for wood burning and one for furnace operating. Lets name our plan Test Plan and save it. This
allows us to edit or remove our new optimization plan from its associated taskbar item, and you can test
your plan in-view using the Test Optimize button. Properly applying your designation, however, requires
a new item that appears on your main menu barthe optimization button.

This button will not appear when you dont have any optimization plans saved. When you have multiple
optimization plans, a button appears besides it that lets you drop down a menu to select which script is the
active onethis also applies the script in question, saving you a mouse click.
Now selecting any number (or, as earlier, selecting none and therefore all) of dwarves and hitting Optimize
will cleave them in two, between the wood burners and the smelters. If the number of dwarves selected is
odd you will get an uneven number of job divisionsin this case three furnace operators but only two wood
burners.

Now lets add a fold of complexity to our plan by including hauling as well. To edit an optimization plan,
go to Optimizer on the taskbar and select the plan from the Edit Optimization Plan menu. This time
lets turn auto-assign haulers on and set it to 50 percent: likewise, set the total jobs percentage to 50 as well.
Now hit Test Optimize at the bottom of the window to see what effect this plan has on our dwarves (I
deliberately avoided doing this earlier to showcase predefined usage and the changes to the menu bar). As
47

you might have guessed this cleaves our dwarves in two: a quarter each are assigned dedicated wood burning
or furnace operating, and the remaining half are made haulers, with their other labors disabled. A note that
needs to be made: optimization plans will obviously only work properly if roles are tuned to the default skill
rank setting we discussed in Roles.

From our little group of five dwarves this results in one wood burner, one furnace operator, and three
haulers. Once again because five is indivisable by two the division is uneven, with more haulers being
assigned than workers. This is the reason that the numbers that the dialogue gives us are approximate - if
the numbers dont fold there will inevitably be some fudging on the corners.
Lets dig a little deeper. Set the maximum number of jobs a dwarf can have to 2 this time, and test the
script again to see what effect this has:

Unless youre particularly insightful, its probably not immediately apparent whats going on herewhy
is only one dwarf hauling anything? So far weve generated three optimization scenarios; now lets use them
to get a better understanding of how the labor optimizer works.
The percent total jobs parameter is a cap on how many jobs can be assigned, out of how many total
possible jobs there are. In the first example this number was set to 100, so the labor optimizer could give
every dwarf a job to do. Since the max jobs per dwarf paramter was set to 1, every dwarf could only get
one job total. Since we have two labors of equal priority under consideration, this means that half of the
dwarves will recieve the wood burning task, and nothing else, and half would recieve the furnace operating
task, and nothing else.
In the second example, we reduced the cap to fifty percent, and kept the number of jobs per dwarf at 1.
This means that fifty percent of dwarves will be assigned one job. Indeed, ignoring some fudging that the
program had to do, again because five is not divisible by two, half of half of the dwarves recieved the wood
burning labor and half of half of them recieved the furnace operating labor.
How did the program behave in the last example? This time the percent labor cap (lets just call it the
labor cap from now on) was still set to 50, but the maximum number of allowed jobs (lets just call it the
job cap from now on) was set to 2. We still have two labors, but now we also have two spaces for them to
be assigned to. In the resulting configuration fifty percent of dwarves are assigned wood burning, but then
another fifty percent are independently assigned furnace operating. Logically, because the labor optimizer
has been allowed to assign jobs twice instead of only once, dwarves that are fitter than the group average
at both wood burning and furnace operating will be assigned both jobs. The labor cap no longer regulates
how many jobs the two labors together can be assigned, but how many times they can appear individually.
Under the single-job scheme, two labors had to contend against one another under the fifty percent job cap,
and so each labor could only be turned on 25 percent of the time; under the two-jobs scheme this is no longer
the case, and so each labor could be turned on a full 50 percent of the time.
In another form, the number of labors that will be turned on will thus be given by the following equation
(note that you have to divide the labor cap by a hundred because it is in percentage form):
jobs cap number of dwarves

labor cap
= number of labors to be assigned
100

And the number of assignments for each individual labor, which is dependent on the ratio, is as follows:
number of labors to be assigned
48

that labor0 s ratio

sum of labor ratios

Lets take this to its logical conclusion: what would happen if we kept jobs cap at 2, but raised the labor
cap to 100 percent? Logically that would mean that every instance of that labor will be assigned - and a
quick test confirms that, indeed, that is the case:

What about the funkiness with the assignment of hauling in example three? If you were following along
with the examples I was giving, and didnt check the tooltip text on the Hauler Percent box in the dialogue,
you might have (wrongly) concluded based on the parameters behavior in examples one and two that the
optimizer assigns hauling to a certain percentage of the total dwarves under consideration. That is not the
case: rather, that percentage is a bit of dwarf-wise post-processing optimization based on how many labors
that dwarf already has assigned.
Basically, the optimizer assigns labors, then goes down the list and asks each dwarf how many labors they
have assigned: one? Two? None? It then compares this to the Hauler Percent value (hauler threshold
from now on), and if the dwarf has fewer than that percent of the maximum number of labors assigned, then
they are assigned hauling tasks. In the example above every dwarf has both labors enabled, and so obviously
no dwarf falls under the fifty percent thresholdand no dwarf is assigned hauling. In example two three of
our dwarves dont have anything assigned post-processing, so they obviously get hauling booted onto them.
Example three actually demonstrates an optimization behavior thats important to know: that the hauling
threshold is strict. Dwarves one and five both have one labor assigned, which is half of two, the number of
labors they could have assigned. In percent form one over two is fifty percent: on the border of our threshold,
but not below it. To get the behavior we want, increase the threshold to 100 percent:

The number required is 100 percent, and not 51 percent, because of the programs behavior.
Theres just one more thing to be said: you can exclude various groupings from optimization right from
the dialogue by unchecking their associated boxes:

Excluding hospitalized dwarves is important if you want the jobs done now, but isnt necessary if no
one (or no one freely available to work and under consideration) is injured, and may be counterproductive
if on the flip side a significant number of your dwarves have sustained recoverable wounds. Excluding
nobles is a poorly optimized solution because while assigned nobles work as normal, royal nobles will not
have much of a work ethic regardless of what tasks you assign to themyou usually wont be considering
nobles regardless, so not excluding them is a safe bet. There is some overlap between active military and
squads: dwarves are considered to be on active duty when they are on call, correspondingly appearing
by their military position in-gamebut to get that far they obviously have to be assigned to a squad first.
Excluding squads is important when your military is fully professional, but of dubious use when you have a
attack-that-thing-now dwarven militia that you never disbanded.
As it turns out, dwarf number five in our examples above is actually a nobleI just havent been excluding
him in the optimization process. Doing so results in exactly the sort of behavior you would expecthes
ignoredand has the nice side effect of tidying up our five divided by two problem.

49

11.1

Exporting and Importing Optimization Plans

Like most of the configurable utilities packaged into Dwarf Therapist, optimization plans can be exported
and made available for others to use, or imported and made available for use in your program.

This feature is only available from the options bar on the optimization plan editing menu, and it doesnt
appear in the Optimization taskbar item. This will be fixed in the next version.

50

12

Addendum: Scanning Memory

If you click on the Scan Memory icon on the main toolbar, you will be brought to the Dwarf Therapist
memory scanning utility:

The result of a brute force string search for hauling.

This will not be covered in this guide. Dwarf Fortress memory mapping and modification is not for
the faint of heart, and is used for two things: finding the RAM values for things necessary to get complex
utilities and mods working (like, say, Dwarf Therapist), and cheating the game by changing them. The first
is way out of the scope of this guide, and for the second there are much more elegant tools available: as
labor management has been given a GUI by the community, so to has memory access and modification. Im
also not going to pretend I fully understand how the tool even works.
Additionally, if you right click on a dwarfs name you will see that there
are some memory options available for individual dwarves as well. You can
Dump Memory to open the memory matrix associated with that dwarf
tabulated in a text box by the program. Dump Memory to File will also
read the dwarfs memory values into a chart, but will save it to a TXT file
in the Dwarf Therapist log subfolder. Finally, you can Copy Address to Clipboard to copy that dwarfs
memory location to your clipboard. This function may be useful if youre interested in modding your dwarves
in-game, but once again its not something the average user would need.

51

Part V

Appendix
13

Hotkeys

Although the main functions that youll be performing with the program have hotkeys, overall hotkey support
is still quite limited.
Hotkey

Action

Refer To

Commands
Ctrl + C
Ctrl + R
Ctrl + T
Ctrl + E
Ctrl + S
Ctrl + P

Connect to Dwarf Fortress

Read Dwarves
Commit
Clear
Snapshot
Options

Connecting to Dwarf Fortress

Connecting to Dwarf Fortress
Managing Your Dwarves
Managing Your Dwarves
Menu Bar
Options

Views (when the View is active)

Scroll
Scroll Vertically
Alt + Scroll Scroll Horizontally

Labors View
Labors View

Groups (when Groups are active)

Hit the key that corresponds with the first letter of the groups name to bring it up.
If there are multiple groups that begin with that letter, you can cycle between them using that key.

14

Modifying Game Data

game data.ini is a .ini file packaged with Dwarf Therapist that describes standard settings for a number of
things, divided between some RAM values, skill levels, position flags, profession IDs, attributes and attribute
strings, military preferences, skill names, traits, dwarven job IDs, thoughts, and a very, very long list of role
modifiers; if youre interested in the profession and job sort key, the master ID list is here. You can change
these values (and therefore the programs behavior) yourself by modifying the document in any TXT editor
to change the programs behavior. Be warned: messing with it can cause all sorts of strangeness and even
crash the program on startup, and should you update Dwarf Therapist the changes youve made to this
document will be lost. Since the default settings are fine for the most part (the happiness bonuses/penalties
for certain thoughts are complete guesswork, but thats because they are unknown to anyone), you should
only modify stuff here if you really know what you are doing.

52